In prior art fire alarm systems, speakers are used to broadcast fire alarm signals to signify a fire alarm condition. The fire alarm signals may be in the form of patterned tones and/or human voices. One of the main problems associated with fire alarm systems is that false alarms frequently occur. Unfortunately, false alarms have become more than simple annoyances and have now begun to endanger the lives of individuals. In some cases, due to the numerous occurrences of false alarms, occupants have simply begun to ignore the fire alarm signals. In other more serious cases, occupants have tampered with the speakers in their dwellings to disable them. Unfortunately this has resulted in speakers of the fire alarm system located in other dwellings also to become disabled.
To deal with the above problem, significant effort has been expended to improve the design of fire alarm systems to reduce the occurrences of false alarms. Little effort has however been expended to improve the design of fire alarm systems to deal with false alarms once they have occurred. This is at least partially due to the fact that retrofitting existing fire alarm systems is difficult and expensive and great care must be taken so as not to effect adversely control panels of the fire alarm systems.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a novel speaker controller for a fire alarm system and a fire alarm system incorporating the same.